In sep­a­rate state­ments issued in con­nec­tion with the 15th World and European Day against the Death Penalty on October 10, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and European Union U.S. Ambassador David O’Sullivan have called upon all nations to halt sched­uled exe­cu­tions and abol­ish the death penal­ty. In his first ever state­ment on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment since becom­ing Secretary-General on January 1, 2017, Guterres described cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a ​“bar­bar­ic prac­tice” that, he said, ​“has no place in the 21st cen­tu­ry.” He said the death penal­ty does lit­tle to deter crimes or serve vic­tims and asked those coun­tries that still have the death penal­ty to “[p]lease stop the exe­cu­tions.” In an arti­cle pub­lished on the inter­net site Medium, Ambassador O’Sullivan — echo­ing the lan­guage of an October 9 Joint Declaration by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the Secretary General of the Council of Europe — wrote that the death penal­ty ​“is inhu­man and degrad­ing, does not have a proven deter­rent effect, and allows judi­cial errors to become fatal.” He said the EU ​“care[s] about the plight of American death row inmates” because “[a]s Europeans we believe fun­da­men­tal­ly that the death penal­ty is incom­pat­i­ble with human dig­ni­ty.” Guterres’s remarks came at a U.N. event on Transparency and the Death Penalty. ​“Some gov­ern­ments con­ceal exe­cu­tions and enforce an elab­o­rate sys­tem of secre­cy to hide who is on death row, and why,” the Secretary-General said. The lack of trans­paren­cy, he said, shows dis­re­spect for human rights norms and dam­ages the fair admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice. A res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed by the U.N. Committee on Human Rights September 29 also empha­sized that a ​“lack of trans­paren­cy in the use of the death penal­ty has direct con­se­quences for the human rights of the per­sons sen­tenced to death,” and called upon coun­tries ​“that have not yet abol­ished the death penal­ty to make avail­able rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion,” includ­ing ​“infor­ma­tion on any sched­uled exe­cu­tion.” Execution secre­cy has been an ongo­ing issue in recent exe­cu­tions across the United States, and an Oklahoma grand jury found that ​“para­noia” on the part of prison offi­cials about keep­ing exe­cu­tion infor­ma­tion secret had ​“caused admin­is­tra­tors to bla­tant­ly vio­late their own policies.”

With opin­ion polls show­ing declin­ing sup­port for the death penal­ty in the United States, O’Sullivan said that the European Union ​“is hope­ful that the down­ward trend in exe­cu­tions will con­tin­ue and ulti­mate­ly lead to the com­plete abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S.” Referencing the expe­ri­ences of America’s 159 death-row exonerees, O’Sullivan said it was time to “[a]bolish the use of the death penal­ty, once and for all.… We can­not stand idly by while inno­cent lives are being tak­en by mistake.”

(D. O’Sullivan, ​“Putting an End to Capital Punishment — Once and for All,” Medium, October 10, 2017AFP Staff, “​‘The death penal­ty has no place in the 21st cen­tu­ry’ – UN chief Guterres,” Agence France Press, October 10, 2017; M. Sampathkumar, ​“UN demands America end ​‘bar­bar­ic’ use of death penal­ty,” The Independent, October 10, 2017.) Read the Joint Declaration by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the Secretary General of the Council of Europe on the European and World Day against the Death Penalty. See International and Lethal Injection.

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